Dr. Herman Frankel is at city council today, handing out homemade signs to thank Mayor Tom Potter. Why? Because Potter proclaimed today as Human Rights Day in Portland.
From the back of Frankel’s signs:
This formal proclamation provides us with an opportunity to honor Mayor Potter for his courage and actions during the past four years, and to express public support for his values and accomplishments.
Potter’s accomplishments? According to Frankel, visionPDX, which “engaged 17,000 people in the process of expressing the values and shaping a vision for Portland’s future.” Potter has also “been a tireless defender of the dignity and rights of all people who live, work, study, travel or worship in Portland,” by doing things like pulling Portland out of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, developing the Children’s Bill of Rights, and creating the Human Rights Commission.
Mayor Potter’s actions have been daily manifestations of the state commitment of his office: “Bringing us together.”
Thank you, Mayor Potter.
The crowd held up their signs after Potter made his declaration. “I really wasn’t aware they were going to do that,” he chuckled to his colleagues.
the recognizing of every person’s human rights is important. I feel it is also important to recognize ways we can engender those human rights. Article 25 of the U.N. universal declaration of human rights stresses the need for adeqiate housing amongst other things. as long as the city has laws like the Anti-Camping law, which forbids even those with no alternative from sleeping outside, then we will not be, in my eyes, living up to the hopes that those human rights represent.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.